Category: Officials Bulletins

Your site has a tool that allows you to post bulletins to your site's "Officials" page.

If your site doesn't already have this page, posting a referee bulletin will create it. Like news items, referee bulletins can be broadcast via email but, in this case, specifically to members who have been assigned to the built-in Officials team.

Author

This field is used to identify the author of the message. You should type your real name here so that readers of your message can identify you.

Email Address

Enter your email address in this field so that readers will be able to click on your name to send you email regarding your message. This should be of the form: yourname@email.com.

Publish date

This field will be filled in automatically with today's date whenever you create a message. You can change this to a date in the future if you'd like to hide the message until that date. Enter any date you wish as long as it is in the correct format: "MM-DD-YYYY" or "MM/DD/YYYY."

Expiration date

This field specifies the date after which the message will no longer be displayed. It is important that messages expire after a reasonable amount of time so that the bulletin board or swap shop areas don't become too crowded with obsolete information. It's also not good to have a listing for an event that's already over or items that were long ago sold.

The default for this field is 15 days from today's date, but you should use a shorter period of time if you can or know when the information will be out of date. For instance, when announcing an upcoming event you should use its date as the expiration date. As above, dates should be in the format: "MM-DD-YYYY" or "MM/DD/YYYY."

Archive
Once a news items expires it will be removed from your site 15 days after the expiration date. To prevent the news item from being deleted from your site and maintaining the expired state of the message, choose to Archive the message. The message will remain expired but will not be removed from your site. This will allow you to use this message again in the future by changing the posting and expiration date, and unchecking the Archive option.

Title

This is the headline for your message. This should be something "catchy" and to the point. Overly long titles may not fit in the display window and are often overlooked by readers. In any case, titles longer that 64 characters will be truncated.

Message

This is where you type the body of the message you want displayed to readers. It can be any type of free-form text you wish.

Picture File

You can specify a picture file (.gif or .jpg) on your computer to upload and display with your message. Press the "Browse" button to find the file on your computer or type its full path and name. If a file has already been uploaded for this message, the check box can be used to turn the picture's display either on (checked) or off. Note that images wider than 310 pixels will be truncated to that width. Pictures taller than 400 pixels will be reduced to that height.

If you have enabled the News Slideshow option , this picture will display in the news slider

Caption

Enter a caption for the photo you uploaded above. This can be any text you like up to 255 characters in length.

Broadcast this message

Check this box to have an email copy of your message sent out via email. If this is a News or Exchange item, it will be sent to all members who have an email address. If this is a Team Bulletin, it will be sent to all members of the specified team(s) and their parents.